lilith love

A year ago, I was counting down the days until Lilith Fair. Salt Lake and Las Vegas had been added to the list of cities, and I couldn't wait to find out dates and artists who would be performing at both cities. It was going to be the highlight of my summer.

So, on July 9th Kate, Jennifer and I drove from Cedar to Vegas for an epic day of Lilith goodness. Not everything went according to plan. The show, which is generally a multi-stage event that begins in the afternoon and continues through the evening, ended up only featuring three artists and started at 9:00 PM. The "smaller" bands had been cut and some of the headliners had dropped out. Ticket sales had not been what had been hoped for, so the venue was changed from the Mandalay Bay Events Center to The Beach at Mandalay-- an outdoor, sandy, poolside venue where people could literally walk through a wade pool and stand at the base of the stage. 

Despite the show not being the hippie-dippy, women-empowering, day-long event I had anticipated, it will always be one of the greatest days of my life. The three artists who did perform were The Bangles, Miranda Lambert, and of course, Sarah McLachlan. The first two sets were incredible, but when Sarah McLachlan took the stage, I was awestruck. There was silence in the crowd of then mostly-drunken women as her voice soothed us and reminded us what it meant to be beautiful, powerful, and to suffer. I was afraid that even breathing would interfere with the beauty of her voice and that I'd miss something: and I wanted to keep it all in my reverie forever. When she finished "World On Fire" I was so overwhelmed with the beauty of it all-- every time I hear that song on my iPod (live cut or not) I still get chills. When it was all over, Kate asked me what I thought. I fell onto my back in the sand and told her "I'm now complete."

And, for that evening I was. It was after 5:00 AM by the time we got back into Cedar and I crawled into bed. I woke up the next day ready to take on the world: change it, help it, do my part. It wasn't long after, that we started talking about Lilith 2011-- how we'd go to a "real" show this time. But, today, I found out that there won't be another Lilith Fair-- ever. That Sarah McLachlan has discontinued the tour indefinitely saying, 

[It’s] about learning more from our failures than our successes, and it was a beautiful organic event that happened at a point in time when it was really needed. And bringing the same thing back last year didn’t really make any sense … Because in 12 years, women have changed a lot. Their expectations have changed, the way they view the world has changed, and that was not taken into consideration, which I blame myself for. (read the whole article here)

 So, as upset as I am that I won't ever get the amazing experience I dreamed of listening to the Lilith Fair soundtracks of the late 1990s. I love that I experienced it at just the time I needed to, with two incredible women-- perhaps the only two women I can imagine spending this experience with. It was perfect in its own right-- and another experience could never replicate it. So, the Lilith portion of me was complete that night-- and, Sarah McLachlan did tell me that I could do anything. 

This is one of my favorite pictures of the day.

Yep, I could actually see her! We were so close! EPIC!